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It’s a sunny Friday afternoon and the students in Ryan Branoff’s Grade 8 classroom are sitting in groups working on a complex math concept.

The very thought might send most kids (and many adults) into a state of dread. But the numbers on the board aren’t the sole focus of today’s lesson. The students are also discussing national defense spending.

It’s all part of this 26-year-old teacher’s avante garde approach to teaching math at Westminster Public School in Thornhill. And he is getting results.

Student hands pop up to offer answers as the discussion unfolds. There are no awkward moments where Branoff has to beg for an answer.

“My students are so pumped up and jazzed about math now,” he says. “It’s very gratifying to know the thing they talk to their parents about is what happened in math class.”

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Branoff’s approach is one part innovation and one part empowerment. He’s thrown away the structured formulaic approach. Heck, he’s even cast aside the text books parents expect to see at the end of the day. In the process, he’s developing critical thinkers.

“I tell them they are all mathematicians and, as a mathematician, you have to prove your results and back it up. So if they were to answer something in my three-part lesson, they have to prove why they did what they did.”

Branoff’s approach has three steps:

First, he poses an activation question, which builds on the students’ background knowledge of previous lessons on, say, multiplication.

Then the main problem of the day is formed, based on the activation discussion.

Students then work together in teams of two so they have support working through the problem. At the end of the discussions, students hold a congress to look at what the other teams have come up with.

Branoff developed the approach himself and refined it through Ministry of Education initiatives.

“It’s kind of a completely backwards approach where teachers in the past would stand up and say, ‘This is how you do this math concept, and repeat after me and do these problems out of the text.’ I am giving them the problem first and then demonstrating what works after the students have shown what they did in generating their ideas.”

In the case of his recent Friday class, Branoff presented them with an amount of money the federal government might spend on a missile defense program — $1 trillion.

He then asked them to play the role of finance minister and write a proposal to the prime minister on how to allocate the money. Should it be spent on missile defense or on other areas, such as universal literacy or immunization?

The math concept he was teaching them was scientific notation and exponential form.

“The cost of each social-justice piece was written in these forms to indicate the cost per year,” he explains. “The students had to make the decision about what they would fund, and how long they would fund it for.”

Branoff has only been teaching for four years but he’s brought a fresh new approach to a subject many students struggle with, especially as they approach high school.

In fact, he admits he never had a real love of math. He did well in the subject, but found he wasn’t as interested in it as other subjects, and didn’t always see real-world applications for what was being taught.

“I was often bored and would have to find some sort of inspiration when it came to math, but generally didn’t see the relevance of what was being taught,” he says.

When he graduated from teachers’ college at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, his goal was to make sure his students were captivated by whatever they were learning.

“When you ask any kid what their least-favourite subject is, most will say math. I think that has a lot has to do with how it was taught in the past — in a repetitive nature and rote-based style of learning,” he says.

He suggests the major shift in his approach is that the onus is on students to learn, and not so much on the teacher to teach.

“I think the reason why this is going over so well with my students is they are being encouraged to take risks, and are taught to be willing to take that risk, and that’s a teachable moment as well.”

Branoff has the support of Westminster principal Lindsey Diakiw.

“He’s an exceptional teacher and has the creative ability and skill to get all kids engaged and excited about math, to the point where they want to stay in from recess to do math,” says Diakiw. “One thing that puts him a cut above is that he is able to engage those kids who are reluctant mathematicians.”

Branoff is also catching the attention of officials at the Ministry of Education, who have studied and filmed his math lessons.

And he is a demonstration teacher this year for the York Region public school board, which means other teachers are being encouraged to book time to attend his class and watch him in action.

How have parents responded?

“Some parents had a lot of questions and were concerned I wasn’t sending the text book home,” says Branoff. “They were hesitant at first, but they were completely thrilled after I showed them how it works.”

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